Hammer movies were showing today on TCM, but I slept to 3 in the afternoon, having recorded them on the DVR. I had an interest in seeing a mixture today. Got in The Mummy (1959), which has Lee looking mighty fierce and menacing in his bandages while Cushing's archaeologist's son has to use his smarts in order to find a way not to be strangled by Kharis. This film, while no need was necessary, went to the Universal Studios' Kharis series for inspiration, including the awful one-armed gimmick where the Mummy strangles people without using both arms. I hate this when there is no reason. Just kill them with both hands so that when it happens, it looks more realistic. Lee, however, is superior to Chaney, Jr. in the menace department...he cuts that figure, tall and imposing in his swampy bandages (the coffin carrying him slides off from a boisterous carriage into a swamp outside of London in 1889), directed by an Egyptian who worships the god Karnak (George Pastell) to kill the British infidels who raided the tomb of their beloved Princess Ananka. Of course, Cushing's wife (played by Yvonne Furneaux) looks just like Ananka which will come in handy when Kharis threatens the last "infidel" still alive responsible for the English expedition that "robbed the graves of those meant to remain inviolate". The sets of Ananka's tomb and the flashbacks to her funeral and burial, along with Kharis' blasphemous attempts to resurrect the princess from beyond the grave, might look a bit inauthentic and look a bit "straight from the workshop", but Lee's Mummy and Pastell's revenge by using a scroll of life to control him--that is until Pastell's Bey asks him to kill Cushing's wife--to kill is reason enough, if not just to see Cushing's scientist have to come to terms with what is seemingly unthinkable (after his father is strangled in a cell after Kharis bends the bars and breaks in, and then strangles a family colleague right before his eyes) and then find a way to outsmart him or else also perish.
The second film I decided to watch was Dracula: Prince of Darkness (1966), with a limited but quite sinister Lee returning as the title character to terrorize a foursome of foreigners traveling through on holiday. Andrew Keir, with that thunderous voice and command on screen, is a right good candidate to take over Cushing's spot as monk crusader against the vampire count. Barbara Shelley has a memorable part as a turned vampire, her husband stabbed in the back and neck-bled by a disciple of Dracula over the count's ashes while hung upside down in the castle. Francis Matthews, who is Frankenstein's voluntary assistant in The Revenge of Frankenstein (1958), gets to be the hero, the brother of Shelley's slain husband, and protector of his wife (played by Suzan Farmer), joining forces with Keir in an attempt to destroy Dracula. I really like this one, but those wondering why Dracula is even in this film I find preposterous. He is photographed and stylized extremely well by Hammer great, Terence Fisher, but no dialogue at all (regardless of who you believe Lee or those behind the screenplay is the culprit) from Dracula is a bit implausible. Hell, he could just make demands/commands, or threaten...sure, his foreboding presence alone is great, but the count should say something, right?
Frankenstein Created Woman (1967) is certainly no Curse, Revenge, or even Must Be Destroyed, but Evil wasn't exactly a masterwork and Monster from Hell didn't necessarily emerge afterward as an improvement. I still found it quite entertaining. First off, just address the obvious. Susan Denberg. What a bombshell. Throw a facial scar on her initially and then later...va va voom! She is a "twisted and ugly" daughter to a cafe owner in the village, in love with a notorious killer's smart, tough, and spry offspring (the father watches in horror as his son won't go away as the guillotine blade comes down). The father is cane-beaten by a trio of drunken affluent droogs of the village from prominent fathers with a name among the villagers, and the kid Hans (who unfortunately tells the dead man he'd kill him for stopping him from using a knife on the trio for their constant mockery of his girl) is convicted of the crime, sentenced to the guillotine (the judge of his case begs him to unveil a possible witness who could rescue him from a death sentence, but Hans will not reveal his tryst with Christina, the murdered father's daughter, so he goes to the guillotine for a crime he didn't commit). This film has the Baron (Cushing) uncovering the means to sustain the soul out of a dead body and giving it a new body as a home. The irony of that body being Christina (after she drowns herself), with Hans using her rebuilt figure and face (thanks to Baron's assistant, played by Thorley Walters, a long-term doctor in the village with a life-long alcoholic problem) to seduce the trio and seek revenge on them when they're at their most vulnerable is what works as the film's most dramatic arc. This, once again, has Baron at odds with the villagers, believing his activities with Walter's doc are questionable and curious...perhaps witchcraft. So here we go again. Because of the murders, Baron's handiwork leads to his undoing. He is his worst enemy. To verify that the soul lives in Christina, the Baron takes her to the guillotine to see if *Hans* will emerge. When he does, this is the catalyst in the revenge angle. Baron once again has allowed his work to end in multiple murders. The downfall of the film, or perhaps it was on purpose, is that those hunted are morally reprehensible characters with no redeeming qualities. So when the Baron is charging into the woods to find Christina to find her before the last murder happens, it isn't suspenseful...because the victim is a scumbag. Denberg's looks are quite utilized. The bosoms of the beauties that Hammer could find for their films are stars themselves.
Thorley Walters was in two of these films today I noticed. He was the weak-minded mental case staying at the monks' chateau in Dracula: Prince of Darkness, used by the count to gain access to Farmer, and the tired, boozing wreck that Baron depends upon (due to his standing with the village and certain physician expertise) in Frankenstein Created Woman. He makes distinctive appearances and leaves these Hammer films with characters we don't forget...no matter how small or significant.
The second film I decided to watch was Dracula: Prince of Darkness (1966), with a limited but quite sinister Lee returning as the title character to terrorize a foursome of foreigners traveling through on holiday. Andrew Keir, with that thunderous voice and command on screen, is a right good candidate to take over Cushing's spot as monk crusader against the vampire count. Barbara Shelley has a memorable part as a turned vampire, her husband stabbed in the back and neck-bled by a disciple of Dracula over the count's ashes while hung upside down in the castle. Francis Matthews, who is Frankenstein's voluntary assistant in The Revenge of Frankenstein (1958), gets to be the hero, the brother of Shelley's slain husband, and protector of his wife (played by Suzan Farmer), joining forces with Keir in an attempt to destroy Dracula. I really like this one, but those wondering why Dracula is even in this film I find preposterous. He is photographed and stylized extremely well by Hammer great, Terence Fisher, but no dialogue at all (regardless of who you believe Lee or those behind the screenplay is the culprit) from Dracula is a bit implausible. Hell, he could just make demands/commands, or threaten...sure, his foreboding presence alone is great, but the count should say something, right?
Frankenstein Created Woman (1967) is certainly no Curse, Revenge, or even Must Be Destroyed, but Evil wasn't exactly a masterwork and Monster from Hell didn't necessarily emerge afterward as an improvement. I still found it quite entertaining. First off, just address the obvious. Susan Denberg. What a bombshell. Throw a facial scar on her initially and then later...va va voom! She is a "twisted and ugly" daughter to a cafe owner in the village, in love with a notorious killer's smart, tough, and spry offspring (the father watches in horror as his son won't go away as the guillotine blade comes down). The father is cane-beaten by a trio of drunken affluent droogs of the village from prominent fathers with a name among the villagers, and the kid Hans (who unfortunately tells the dead man he'd kill him for stopping him from using a knife on the trio for their constant mockery of his girl) is convicted of the crime, sentenced to the guillotine (the judge of his case begs him to unveil a possible witness who could rescue him from a death sentence, but Hans will not reveal his tryst with Christina, the murdered father's daughter, so he goes to the guillotine for a crime he didn't commit). This film has the Baron (Cushing) uncovering the means to sustain the soul out of a dead body and giving it a new body as a home. The irony of that body being Christina (after she drowns herself), with Hans using her rebuilt figure and face (thanks to Baron's assistant, played by Thorley Walters, a long-term doctor in the village with a life-long alcoholic problem) to seduce the trio and seek revenge on them when they're at their most vulnerable is what works as the film's most dramatic arc. This, once again, has Baron at odds with the villagers, believing his activities with Walter's doc are questionable and curious...perhaps witchcraft. So here we go again. Because of the murders, Baron's handiwork leads to his undoing. He is his worst enemy. To verify that the soul lives in Christina, the Baron takes her to the guillotine to see if *Hans* will emerge. When he does, this is the catalyst in the revenge angle. Baron once again has allowed his work to end in multiple murders. The downfall of the film, or perhaps it was on purpose, is that those hunted are morally reprehensible characters with no redeeming qualities. So when the Baron is charging into the woods to find Christina to find her before the last murder happens, it isn't suspenseful...because the victim is a scumbag. Denberg's looks are quite utilized. The bosoms of the beauties that Hammer could find for their films are stars themselves.
Thorley Walters was in two of these films today I noticed. He was the weak-minded mental case staying at the monks' chateau in Dracula: Prince of Darkness, used by the count to gain access to Farmer, and the tired, boozing wreck that Baron depends upon (due to his standing with the village and certain physician expertise) in Frankenstein Created Woman. He makes distinctive appearances and leaves these Hammer films with characters we don't forget...no matter how small or significant.
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